Yogurt on the Floor

I have had my lovely new Macbook for 6 months now, and my fabu little Flip-type camera for just as long. Yet we've been ridiculously neglectful about capturing video, until lately, and it took me until today to figure out how to transfer the video clips into a usable form, say, on this blog. Of course, today I figured out that it's embarrassingly easy, and iMovie is my friend. So, my shameful technological pokiness notwithstanding, I'm pretty psyched about my newfound cinematic abilities.

Molly turned three on Monday, and of course she just keeps getting funnier and cuter, and more bossy, too. Mostly, her hilarity is self-explanatory, but this video probably needs a little backgrounder.

About a month ago, I was on the phone with my mom when I noticed a big glob of yogurt on the living room floor. This might be shocking to some of you "hygienic" folks, but here at the Cibula house, it's pretty much par for the course. So I looked down and mentioned it, and soon, Molly was yelling "There's yogret on the floi! There's yogret on the floi!"

Mom told my stepdad, Dennis, and the rest is the stuff of song legend. Because Dennis decided to compose a little musical number, to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Lyrics to the song go something like this:

In the kitchen and the bathroom there is yogret on the floor
In the living room and dining room, there's yogret on the floor
In the hallway and the basement, I think there's even more
There's yogret on the floor.

Who is cleaning up the yogret?
Who is cleaning up the yogret?
Who is cleaning up the yogret?
There's yogret on the floor!

Quickly, as you might imagine, this became Molly's favorite song. When she is upset, crying in the car, whatever, a jolly burst of "Yogret on the Floor" can perk her right up. Here she is, singing it herself, although as you can see, she's way too Mariah or Beyoncé to totally perform for the camera:

More Bear, Please!

Parent teacher conferences are barely over. Matt's out of town til Sunday. Sam's running all over town with choir and rehearsals for "A Christmas Carol." He gets to play the spooky kid "Want" who sits on the grave at the end of the play :-) I have a mountain of planning to do and lamination to cut out. And a million things to return to Old Navy. So weekends are not so much, well, anything but running around.

But that's not why I'm blogging today. Today I'm blogging about Bear. Not just any bear. Bear. See, Molly has had the great good fortune or misfortune (depending on your perspective) of landing in a TV obsessed family. We watch a lot of television. And so does Molly. Our DVR is filled with old "Daily Shows" and "Mad Men" and "Sesame Streets." Something for everyone. But Molly is a discriminating television viewer. She won't watch just anything. But the things she loves, she LOOOOOOOVES. And she wants to watch them again and again.

It started with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." She calls both shows "Obama," and she's generally perfectly happy to sit through them. Because she's got a finely-honed satirical comic sense.

But lately, things have gotten more stratified. We have hours of "Sesame Street" on the DVR. But recently, we discovered an episode where Oscar the Grouch is the anchor of GNN--"Grouch News Network"--and he goes around Sesame Street looking for the yuckiest, grouchiest news. Specifically, he discovers that Horatio the Elephant is stuck in Maria's bathtub. Molly has watched this episode so many times--hell, we've all watched it so many times that we can reenact it--but Molly's watched it so many times, that as soon as we pull up to the house after we pick her up from daycare her first words are "More Oscar Pleeeease." We have tried other episodes of "Sesame Street," but nothing is acceptable. Even the episode where Gilbert Gottfried is "Denny the Distractor" and his job is to distract Telly, who was trying to recite the alphabet as a contestant on Guy Smiley's game show.

But it doesn't stop there. A couple of weeks ago, we watched an old episode of "Teletubbies," featuring a little Punch-and-Judy-type Italian handpuppet who runs around a house and sings, badly from the windows in an operatic voice. Molly calls him "Bear." She loves "Bear." She thinks "Bear" is the best, most entertaining singer she's ever heard. She would watch and re-watch "Bear" for hours, if we let her. "Bear" even caused a major blowout between Emma and Sam, because Sam got really sick of "Bear" and he accused Emma of goading him by continuing to play "Bear" for Molly. When Molly watches "Bear," and he's done singing she cheers "Yay, 'Bear'!" Or she says "Oh, 'Bear,'" with a kind of affectionate mock-exasperation, like "what have you gotten yourself into now, 'Bear'?"

But really, I can't even do "Bear" justice in a description. You really, truly, have to see him for yourself:




You can see the appeal.

It's mutated from there, of course. Now Molly's really gotten into all the opening theme songs for the shows the rest of us watch. She likes the part of "The Simpsons" where Homer says "'Doh!" so she says "More 'Dope'" and we watch that over and over. Sam and Emma like to yell "Gone!" at eliminated contestants in the opening credits of reality shows so now we watch "More 'Gone'" at the start of "America's Next Top Model." She discovered the theme music for "Mad Men" where the guy's falling, and so now we have to watch "More Song." The other night we had to watch "More Opening" to see the title credits of "The Office" 3 or 4 times. It's a wonder we get to watch anything at all. :-) Perhaps that's her diabolical plan.

It's 50 degrees outside, but we're thinkin' SUMMER

Taking a temporary break from table dancing

Blogging instead of doing Spanish homework. I gave myself a year and a half to do a semester's worth of Spanish and now I have 12 days left to get in 11 assignments and 2 tests. Can it happen? Probably not. So here I am. Vamanos!

Four more weeks before summer vaca, which is pretty fabulous. Less fabulous is our always-changing daycare situation. When I started teaching last fall, I was really worried about the whole daycare thing, what with Molly being home only 2 months. So we put her in a great preschool 3 days a week and sent her to work with daddy the other 2 days. Which sounded like a great idea (I took Sam and Em to work w/me when they were babies) esp. since Matt works for my mom and grandma's a very tolerant boss. But our sleepy 9 month old turned into a very active 10/11/12 month old and it quickly became an untenable situation for Matt. Never mind that she loved her daddy more than me because she spent all day with him. So after winter break, we regrouped. Very lucky for us, our friend Jennifer, with her own gorgeous little boy from ET, agreed to watch Molly on her non-preschool days. I don't know how Jennifer does it, but it's been fabulous for us, because Molly loves her playmate, their toys are way cooler than ours, and she generally has an awesome time over there.

So now we're looking to next fall, and our preschool only has the same 3 day a week spot (It's university affiliated--doesn't anyone take sabbaticals or transfer schools anymore?) So we're switching her to a new preschool. This makes me nervous because I truly love the place she is. I trust the teachers absolutely, they are well trained, have been there forever, are just all-around wonderful. The 2-year-old teacher has been there since Sam started there (she was his 1 year old teacher and then his 2 year old teacher) and he's STILL her favorite kid. So there. I'm frankly worried about starting all over again, and I have a lot less info on this new place. There are a couple of up sides, however. First, it's cheaper. Second, they have a Spanish program for the kids, which is pretty cool. Maybe Molly can practice with me. Third, they have great food! Not only do they feed the kids lunch and 2 snacks (so no more bringing our own cobbled-together lunches for M: A bag of grapes, some tomatoes, some cheese in a bag...). Not only do they have vegetarian options for lunch every day. But the food looks really GOOD. Like homemade orange scones and fresh fruit compote good. It smells really good in there. It's weird. I've never seen anything like it. Not that I'm complaining.

Most importantly, however, they've got a spot for us. Sort of. I heard from them last week and they said they can sign us up if we can start paying in July. This, of course, is problematic. I'm off til September, and I want to spend the time with Molly. Plus, I can think of a couple of other ways to spend a couple grand than in preschool when M can stay home with me. Hm. But we decided that bird in hand is the way to go, and otherwise, we'd be starting again from scratch. Plus, it's still cheaper than full-time at her current school, even w/the extra summer tuition. So Molly will start on a part time flexible basis in July. The bonus is that this will give her a chance to transition REAALLLLLY SLOWWWLLLLY to the new school, instead of being plunked in there 8 hours a day on Sept. 2. Also, as my mom likes to point out, it will give her a chance to play with kids instead of watching "Jon and Kate Plus 8" on TLC with me all summer. Thanks mom. Now we just have to come up w/$1400 in the next day or so. Huh.

Molly's favorite activity is table dancing (see above). With one sweep, she can clear away everything on our makeshift coffee table, push off our 20 pound cat, and climb on up. Then she stomps around to her inner music. She also enjoys dancing on the pole outside our favorite Indian restaurant. At this rate, maybe she'll be able to pay her own way through preschool.